


all that glitters is not gold

by mollykor



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, F/M, Flashbacks, Hurt No Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:47:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29156817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollykor/pseuds/mollykor
Summary: Kat knows that it's not the same man she fell in love with, but that doesn't make it any easier for her to do what has to be done.
Relationships: Katrina Cornwell/Gabriel Lorca | Mirror Gabriel Lorca
Kudos: 7





	all that glitters is not gold

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, I'm fairly awful at tagging and all that jazz, so please do enjoy and leave kudos/comments if you like it. If you just so happen to be a certain friend of mine (*cough cough* ISSY) , then don't ask the context of this ok it's slightly strange and hard to explain. ENJOY!

She’s never been face to face with someone like this before. Sure, she had killed Klingons in close combat, and fought others like this in SERE training, but never with someone she knew well. No, she didn’t know him at all, this wasn’t her Gabriel. Her Gabriel was soft and kind and sweet and loved her. This Lorca was the complete antithesis of him, hard and rough and bitter-tongued and she didn’t know him. But why was it so hard to convince herself that she didn’t?

He looked the same as him, a little musclier and less soft if anything, but he had the same eyes. Those eyes, simultaneously the same ones that her own had locked with on her first day at the academy, blue and cold and piercing and not at all representative of his personality and behaviour, and not the same ones that she had spent the majority of her lifetime gazing into. The blue of his irises were the sorts of blue you would find in the sky after heavy rainfall, the stormy blue that held the comfort of calm after the tempest, or the kind you could see at the deep end of a pool when you can’t see the bottom, a plunge into the unknown.

He pressed the phaser deeper into her gut, and she began to feel herself slip into the blind panic that had been mounting over the past few minutes while being held at gunpoint, threatening to overwhelm her senses. She began to count, the same way she would tell her patients to when they encountered a flashback of some sort, one, two, three, stop shaking, four, deep breaths, five, head up, chin up. Her hands, pressed between their bodies, were clasped, fingers intertwined with her own, fiddling with the golden ring on her second finger, right hand. Her sister had given that to her, right when she was about to leave for the academy, and had told her to “always keep it close to her heart, just like you should with me”. Her vision had been clouded with tears in that moment, but she saw the blurriness of her sister’s smile that she loved so much and felt a strong, warm, familiar hand on her upper arm.

The hand on her upper arm now was cold, commanding and firm, fingers digging almost painfully into her shoulder, large enough to wrap around the whole of her bicep and keep her firmly in place. She counted again, one, unclench your hands, two, three, exhale slowly, four, five. She inhaled deeply, and with as much strength as she could muster, shoved him away from her with both hands firmly planted on his chest. He stumbled back, desperately grabbing for leverage as he fell backwards, close enough to the edge of the reactor that Kat held her breath. As much as she hated him, it hurt her terribly to lose him again, even if this man just shared the same face as hers. The same eyes, the same hair, the same half-smile that he did when she was talking about something she was passionate about, ranting on as she would get carried away in her head and the facts.

She took a step closer to him, phaser unhooked from her own belt, and aimed it straight at his head. Looking down the length of the gun at him, she saw the same expression he had when she was in his room, foolishly pretending that he was the same Gabriel she had watched the meteors with, the same one who had stayed up with her when she couldn’t sleep from the fear and terror. The expression he had when she had traced his scars, only to find a phaser in her face and a hand around her neck a fraction of a second later. The same expression he wore when he tried to play it off as PTSD, his capture making him more on edge, more alert all the time, even to go as far as to sleep with a phaser under his pillow, but she couldn't believe that. The look he had given her when she had told him that he needed to get some real help, that he needed to be relieved of his duties. He had looked so scared in that moment, the fact that she might’ve taken his ship away from him, it had almost hurt her to do this to him. But she had known, even back then, that he wasn’t the same man she loved.

Focusing back in, the grip on the phaser pointed at Lorca’s head tightened, and she forced herself to breathe slower, controlling herself. One, finger on the trigger, two, stop looking into his eyes, three, shoulders back, four, inhale, five, exhale. Kat fired.

His eyes rolled back into his head, the blueness thankfully gone from her sight, but nonetheless she felt her throat close up at the sight of him. His head lolled back over the edge of the hole to the reactor, and with one final gathering of her strength, she kicked the side of his torso, as hard as she could, and he fell. She didn’t bother to look over the side to see him fall.

Her knees gave out and she found herself on the floor, head in her hand and tears leaking from her eyes. That wasn’t her Gabriel, she kept repeating in her head like a mantra, he didn’t share any of his memories, he had proved that on that fateful night. With a defeated sigh, she hugged her arms around herself tighter, placing a hand on her shoulder and squeezing gently, and one on her stomach where Gabriel had put his when they would cuddle together. Her lithe frame shaking and convulsing on the blood-slicked floor, she brought her knees up to her chest in a defensive way, protecting herself from the thoughts that continued to threaten her mind even when she continued counting. There were things she knew for certain though.

One, that Gabriel Lorca was not her Gabriel.  
Two, that Gabriel Lorca could not hurt her anymore.  
Three, her Gabriel was lost, possibly forever.  
Four, the phaser was set to kill.  
Five, that Gabriel Lorca was dead.

**Author's Note:**

> Suggestions to improve are welcome, god knows I need them. Also could someone please tell me where the Star Trek Disco fans are hanging around these days? I wanna share some opinions n all that :)


End file.
